The influence of task context on neural population activity during natural scene discrimination

项目概要/摘要 环境背景严重影响我们的视觉感知，使我们能够提取相关信息 从自然界中发现的大量感官输入中。这一点尤其重要， 我们需要区分自然环境中的感官输入，比如在人群中寻找朋友。上下文 可以分为两个组成部分，这两个组成部分可能会影响我们进行辨别的能力：我们对 视觉输入和我们期望的输入。研究调查的影响， 调制主要是评估活动的个别神经元只使用一些简化的刺激任务 这两种成分是无法分离的这极大地限制了我们将这些发现推广到 自然环境中，熟悉和期望影响神经群体活动，并塑造我们的 感知能力本研究的主要目的是探讨任务情境对认知行为形成的影响 神经群体反应和行为表现。在第一个具体目标中，我们将评估 调节刺激熟悉性对神经活动和行为的影响。我们假设刺激熟悉度的增加 通过调节群体活动来增强刺激的编码，从而提高我们的感知能力。在 第二个具体目标，我们将评估调节刺激计划将如何变化的预期的效果 对神经活动和行为的影响我们假设，期望修改人口活动，以有利于 当前的任务环境，并提高行为表现。我们采用人口水平措施的战略将 揭示隐藏在只测量单个神经元的分析中的信号。这项研究的结果将建立 神经群体活动如何适应环境背景的不同方面，以改善我们的视觉 自然环境中的感知。这将增强我们对基本神经机制的理解 影响非疾病状态下的视觉感知，使得有可能在开发治疗方法方面取得进展， 视觉感知不正确的疾病。 除了一个令人兴奋的和创新的研究项目，这项建议概述了一个全面的培训 该计划将为我提供必要的培训，以推动我作为一名独立研究人员的职业生涯。这 计划强调1）获得视觉感知的神经基础的更深层次的概念性理解， 2)学习必要的实验技术和计算分析， 人口活动对行为的影响，3）提高科学沟通技能，4）拓宽我的科学网络， 5）给我提供指导他人的机会。培训将在以下指导下进行： 博士马修·史密斯是一位将神经群体活动与视觉感知联系起来的专家，他在华盛顿大学， 匹兹堡大学和卡内基梅隆大学共同提供了一个优秀的神经科学社区， 在世界知名的教师跨越神经科学的每一个领域，广泛的跨学科研究和 合作，以及在培训未来独立调查人员方面令人印象深刻的记录。

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Environmental context heavily influences our visual perception, allowing us to extract relevant information from the overwhelming amount of sensory input found in the natural world. This is particularly important when we need to discriminate sensory inputs in our natural environment, such as finding a friend in a crowd. Context can be separated into two components that could affect our ability to make discriminations: how familiar we are with the visual input, and what we expect the input to be. Studies investigating the effects of contextual modulation have primarily assessed the activity of individual neurons using only a few simplified stimuli in tasks where these two components can’t be separated. This greatly limits our ability to generalize these findings to natural environments where familiarity and expectation influence neural population activity and shape our perceptual abilities. The overarching goal of this proposal is to investigate the effects of task context on shaping neural population responses and behavioral performance. In the first specific aim, we will assess the effect of modulating stimulus familiarity on neural activity and behavior. We hypothesize that increased stimulus familiarity improves our perceptual abilities by modulating population activity to enhance the encoding of the stimulus. In the second specific aim, we will assess the effect of modulating the expectation of how a stimulus will change on neural activity and behavior. We hypothesize that expectation modifies population activity to benefit the current task context and improve behavioral performance. Our strategy to employ population-level measures will reveal signals hidden from analyses that only measure single neurons. The results of this study will establish how neural population activity is tailored to different aspects of an environmental context to improve our visual perception in a naturalistic environment. This will enhance our understanding of the basic neural mechanisms affecting visual perception in a non-disease state, making it possible to progress in developing treatments for disorders where visual perception is awry. In addition to an exciting and innovative research project, this proposal outlines a comprehensive training plan that will provide me with essential training to advance towards a career as an independent researcher. This plan emphasizes 1) gaining a deeper conceptual understanding of the neural underpinnings of visual perception, 2) learning the necessary experimental techniques and computational analyses required to relate neuronal population activity to behavior, 3) improving scientific communication skills, 4) broadening my scientific network, and 5) providing me with opportunities to mentor others. The training will be conducted under the guidance of Dr. Matthew Smith, an expert in relating neural population activity to visual perception, at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University which together provide an outstanding neuroscience community rich in world-renowned faculty spanning every domain of neuroscience, extensive interdisciplinary research and collaboration, and an impressive track-record for training future independent investigators.